Hayward City Councilman Bill Quirk is rolling out his campaign for the new 20th Assembly District seat.

The district, as just redrawn by the Citizens Redistricting Commission, will include Hayward, San Lorenzo, Castro Valley, Fairview, Ashland, Union City, the upper half of Fremont, and Sunol. It’s northern half, now part of 18th District, is currently represented by Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley, who’ll be term-limited out of office in 2012. The southern half of the new district, now part of the 20th District, is represented by Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont; Wieckowski’s home falls in the newly drawn 25th District, which includes Fremont’s southern half as well as Milpitas, Santa Clara and part of San Jose.

“I look forward to working with Bob in representing Fremont,” Quirk said in an endorsement solicitation e-mail today, saying his seven years on Hayward City Council should stand him in good stead in Sacramento, where a good listener and consensus-builder could be an antidote to gridlock.

Quirk wrote that his primary concern is to get Californians back to work, and in the long term, that means investing in education.

“We need to create more revenue for K-12 and higher education,” he said. “Another way to stimulate job creation is by simplifying regulations and streamlining the approval processes for new businesses, while still protecting consumers and the environment. Finally, we can create jobs by encouraging the generation of more green energy and technology.”

Quirk said he already has landed endorsements from some well-connected and deep-pocketed Democratic benefactors such as Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer and former Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, as well as the mayors of Hayward and Livermore.

Democrat Jennifer Ong of Hayward, an optometrist with a practice in Alameda, also is seeking this seat.

Adnan Shahab, the Republican nominee whom Wieckowski defeated for the existing 20th District seat in 2010, intends to run again; he lives in the part of Fremont which would fall within the new 20th District’s boundaries, and so could be a potential general-election opponent to Quirk or Ong.

Pleasanton Mayor Jennifer Hosterman, a Democrat, had declared intent to run in the 18th District but lives in what will now be the 16th.

We need to take a closer look at anyone whom Perata and the Lockyers have so quickly endorsed. Is this guy Quirk just another interchangeable “machine candidate” who votes as told, without an independent thought of his own? Maybe the “grand deal” is that this guy is just a “bench warmer” for Nadia Lockyer to take the Assembly seat in 2018. It’s also odd that the mayor of Livermore, an optometrist who tends to endorse Republicans, supposedly has endorsed Democrat Quirk over fellow optometrist Jennifer Ong. (But his political dynasty is notorious in the Tri-Valley for its crass opportunism.) Optometrists tend to stick together in state political races because Sacramento regulates their business practices.